Week 6: Sedation

While in the MICU this week, I did not have an intubated patient. However, I asked my nurse about the sedation vacation policy at Cottage. A sedation vacation is a period when critical patients who are intubated are given a break from the heavy sedative drugs (such as Versed, Fentanyl, Lorazepam) so the team can assess if the ventilator can be discontinued (the ultimate goal). She explained that the policy was recently changed to take the patients off sedation early in the morning, so that by the time the doctors are making their rounds the patients are waking up. This was a simple change in policy, yet the result was more patients were extubated sooner and had shorter ICU stays simply because the physician was present during the sedation vacation. My nurse also explained that you can expect all the patients on the unit who are intubated to have sedation vacations.Therefore you can anticipate it, and it will only not be performed if there is a doctors order that the patient is too critical and does meet criteria.